Alright. We are back. The staging area episode five here. This is going to be the post national special. I'm joined, by Tory from dcsports87.

You know, I'll just make a couple opening remarks. I thought it was amazing. When I walked into the national, you just see brands, content, and people. Everything just, like, comes at you fast.

And right when I walked in, I was telling Tory this when we got a chance to meet that, the DC Sports 87 brand was everywhere, which was awesome to see and got a chance to, catch up with Tory at the booth and see some of the behind the scenes operation, which I'm sure we'll be getting into that today.

So, if you are going through withdrawal from the national, this is the episode for you. It's gonna be fun. Tory and I really haven't shared any notes about our own experience, so we're just gonna do it in real time here on the pod.

But, Tory, you are back in reality. You spent more time in Rosemont, Illinois than than I did. How are you feeling? How are you doing?

Great. Yeah. I got in there Tuesday morning, for our setup, and I flew back Monday morning. So I had one solid week. So, a lot of time and a lot of great meals at Gibson's. Not a not a not a terrible place to have to eat a lot.

No. Tons of awesome interactions with customers, partners, friends in the hobby, everything. And now that we're you know, I've been home for, what, seventy two hours or so, I'm gonna say I'm mostly eased back into real life.

But, show was amazing. Hope it was for you and for everyone as well, and just kind of excited to do a a little post show decompress, put it all out there.

What did we think? What did we feel now? I, I'm very jealous of your Gibson's. I had a bunch of dinners lined up that I had to postpone because I had work obligations that popped up and that was causing me to work in the evening.

So while you were eating Gibson's likely way before me, I was back at my hotel room around nine to ten eating Chipotle via DoorDash every night, which I'm a Chipotle fan.

I can't complain, but I would much rather have had a rib eye steak from Gibson's. Yeah. The the business hack is you make your dinners dinner meetings.

So then you've got your business talk taking place and you're being productive while the bone in filet is on your plate. So and you're kinda, you know, quite literally having your cake and eating it too.

So, you know, just that that's a tricky multitasking that works out really well. I might have to do this now. Take your advice and, maybe book a table, for stacking slabs in DC Sports eighty seven, at the next international.

So when we're back on here, we can talk about how great the food is. But we've got a lot to talk about. Maybe we'll just kick it off here with just do you have maybe a word that describes kind of that's that week run you had?

If you had to all sum it up into one word, kind of, what would it be? Yeah. For us, growth. Like and I mean that in a lot of ways. That's not just how many cards we took in that we brought back for consignment.

Like, yeah, that number grew, and that's super exciting. But it was getting the brand to a point that, like you said, like, it's so exciting for us, and it's not a brag.

It's just exciting. Like, we walked into the main lobby of the Donald D Stevens Convention Center, and right first thing we see is, like, the national logo and then two big DC sports banners.

So just making brand a priority was so cool. And as you walk the show floor, we had a couple leading into the Breakers Pavilion. We had some on the side walls. We just wanted to make a point to put our name out there.

So, I got to go up on stage with eBay live team. Shout out Aaron Fitzner who MC'd most of the events up there. I don't know how his voice lasted the week, but, yeah, we talked to more customers than we ever have.

We took in more cards than we ever have. Our logo and brand was more places than it's ever been. And so for us, it was just a huge step forward as a company.

And the great thing about this hobby is that's exciting for us as a business to grow, but that also just meant we have that many more people who have bought from us on eBay, who have sold us on eBay.

And so, all those little conversations just about everyone, it was, hey. I bought from you guys. Hey. I've sold with you guys before.

Hey. I saw your banner over there. And so, yeah, just a lot of amazing, amazing conversations from every possible angle. It's like the, you know, the whole six degrees of thing. You do it like celebrities.

Like, we kinda play that game now where it's like we've just touched everybody in some way, and it's like you've got these natural built in icebreakers to every conversation. So super exciting. Growth is what I would go with.

I I wanna maybe touch on the brand side. I'm a a brand marketer. I've been a brand marketer my entire career, and I think in us chatting and me learning more about you and the business, one of your areas of focus has been brand.

I think it's part of the reason why you and I are doing this show and talking on a regular basis, and then just seeing the banners and the investment in brand. And I brand is so critical. It's important.

It's not just logos, design, that sort of thing, but it's kinda when you're not in the room, what people are saying and thinking about you. I think maybe just this would be good for any other hobby businesses in the space.

Maybe talk about why brand is so important to you, and why you're investing so much in making brand kinda, making your brand known, in the industry at kind of the biggest show of the year?

Right. Yeah. I'd say two main main points there.

Number one, be sure you can execute before brand and marketing is your focus. And so, you know, I think there's a lot of people that wanna post on social media and they wanna be content creators. Maybe they wanna flip singles.

Maybe they wanna consign. They wanna be a breaker. But they haven't really built up the ability to execute first, and they jump straight into branding. And your eyes can get really big, and your stomach can't handle it sometimes.

And so, you know, our journey as a company has really been be sure we get the people on board who we trust here in house, be sure we have processes that we can execute, and we're not perfect, but, you know, perfect our processes the best we can.

And then we really only did that for most of the last eight, ten years we've been doing this, and it's really just in the last year or two that we've got our capacity, our team to a point that we can pivot and focus on that stuff to grow the business.

We didn't wanna explode with volume and not be able to keep up.

So that's one. And I think two, there's just so many people in the hobby now. Like, every day, I'm talking to people who I didn't even know did cards that I know from some other walk of life that are getting into it.

And so you really need to invest in technology, in content, in brand, in marketing at some point to be sure that people know who you are, especially in our position. We're consignor. Right?

If you're new to the hobby, you haven't consigned before, you haven't let somebody else sell your cards, it takes a leap of faith to throw $10,000 in cards in a package and ship them off to somebody and trust they'll take care of them.

And so for our business, you know, our trust is built on doing right by our customers over time and executing, like I said first.

But once you are confident you can do that, branding is just an important part of how you get your name out there.

And the more people see your brand, I think the more willing they are to look you up online, to approach you, to shoot you a DM, to ask their questions.

And so I think it really kinda fanned the flames of people's willingness to come and just talk to us at the booth. That's what we want. You know, we wanna interact with these things, and this is the the biggest one of the year.

So it it was great. I think it really worked for us this year. The the word that came to my mind as I was putting this together was maturity. And I think one and I'd love your feedback on this story.

I think one of my biggest observations was just the maturity in the corporate space of companies like DC Sports where, I remember even, you know, four or five years ago going to the National, and the corporate space was mostly just, manufacturers and grading sponsors.

And those that weren't that were just maybe a table with a pop up banner. And it's not just like the aesthetics of having an incredible setup, which DC Sports and many others did.

But almost just like the conversations with those businesses, it was, like, up leveled in a way where it wasn't just like, oh, I do this thing, and I've got this other job.

But it was business owners and operators that were fully invested in the hobby, thinking about how technology, will create better experiences and just a whole lot more.

And I just left so impressed. I was like, man, it's just incredible. Like, five years ago, there there's no way I could have imagined some of these conversations.

And now that they were now that they were happening, and I was just left with, this makes me feel really good about not only this current state of the industry, but just, like, the cards that I have in my case.

I feel like you need that foundation. You need people and businesses invested that can kinda continue to push, the business forward. So maturity was a big word for me as I was driving on, 65 home back to Indianapolis.

Yeah. For sure. I I think maturity and it kind of feeds into what you said your comments there, but innovation too. And you see a lot of that where, you know, if you go to the national ten years ago, it was super exciting.

You saw your friends from the hobby you didn't see all the time, but a lot of the show floor felt kind of museum like. It's a lot of show off, not a lot of interaction.

And now you've got eBay live, you've got the stuff Fanatics is doing, the stuff you manufacturers are doing, the stuff companies like us are doing, having more consignors and auction houses interacting with people, showing off inventory, talking about their their platforms.

So, yeah, people are just there's way more engagement than there's ever been.

I think content's a big part of that. Technology's a big part of that. But for sure, it's a it's a different vibe in a very good way than we saw, you know, many years past.

So at the end of the day, this is a podcast where we talk about cards. So I have to ask and I know you I can't imagine we'll get into, like, the, all the cards that DC Sports brought in, and I'm sure you saw some incredible cards.

This is the place the Nationals the place where you only see certain cards one time a year.

Was there any specific card that stands out to you where you think back on the National twenty twenty five and you're like, that is a cool card that I'm not sure I'll ever forget seeing.

For sure. So, we did, and then we're gonna talk about the whole same day listing, kind of offering we had this year.

But, the first day of the show so this was Wednesday in that, you know, condensed evening where they're only open from three to eight. We had a package walk up. Customers sold us before.

I think it was only, like, 20 cards, but north of a $100. The first card on the top of the pile was a messy eminence one zero one auto. Got listed same day, already sold $15,000, already got paid for. And it was like, okay.

This is cool. You know, we knew we were gonna get a lot of those national exclusive products we're offering on the list same day, but that was one where it was like, when I saw that card and we listed it right away, it was like, okay.

The national has started now. Like, this is a cool kickoff.

So same package out of Burrow white sparkle prism rookie that was a BGS 10, a Messi color blast, a Brady gold standard auto. Like, it was it was an incredible mix of pieces, but that Messi was, like, the first one I saw.

And so, yeah, definitely, even though we took in, you know, like, a 100,000 cards, it was like, okay. I can I can remember this package and it, it definitely stuck with me? Alright. Let that's incredible.

Let's talk about the same day listing. I I wanna get into the weeds on it a little bit, but maybe from a people being attracted to that message and being, like, same day listing, this sounds like something I'm interested in.

Maybe those those early initial conversations as you got set up and you're promoting this, like, was there anything you like, reasons why, I guess, like, that box that came to you that you just described, like, what were the reasons why, I guess, that individuals wanted to list their cards right away?

What did you learn? Yeah. So I'll say it's kinda interesting because we mostly inventory we sell on a day to day basis back home all the time.

We kinda live in the mid end. You know, we live in the 20 to a $100 cards we've talked about before. The same day kind of attracted everything but that, and it was interesting.

We got a lot of that in there. But what we got a ton of was the national stuff. The the first day, someone opened a 100 of those LEAF national wrapper redemption packs and just brought us every single card.

I think because they knew they could sell a lot of those for $10. 20, $30 if they're the first sale on eBay, that maybe as the market gets flooded with that stuff and everyone gets home, those become 5 to $8 cards.

The other was like that package I just talked about. There's something about the security and safety of I've got super valuable cards in my hand. Maybe I don't wanna put them in the mail.

Maybe I wanna walk around the show floor, but if I decide I wanna sell them, you walk right up to our booth, you hand them to a person in real life, you see them on eBay that night, there's no waiting, so you get that fun instant gratification, urgency to having them listed, and you don't have any questions about it.

And if people do have questions, we're standing right there.

We're we're right across the table saying, here's how we're gonna list them. If you have any requests, let's talk about it. We can help you out with that. If you want advice on how to sell them.

So, it was really cool to see that, and just be able to offer it to dealers, to breakers, to just casual customers there at the national for their first time ever who opened one pack and just wanted to give us the hit.

So, yeah. Was very was very fun to execute and get our booth kinda set up to accommodate that, which required some some change from our past year setups.

Yeah. Maybe talk to us about that change and just, like, how the process went. I'm curious, like, how did you all have to organize your team to make sure that you were able to satisfy this offer that you're putting out?

Yeah. Yeah. So we we had a booth that was 200 square feet bigger this year. So we had a 20 by 30 booth. So instead of our usual 20 by 20 from the last few years, we had a 10 by 20 area in the back.

We set up a couple of our photo and listing stations with all our imaging devices that we use, laptops, how to run it, all that running back there.

And basically, as cards were dropped off at the counter, they went straight back there, and we had two people working that would just immediately jump on them, and we just were listing the the whole time as that stuff came in.

So kinda had two crews. We had our, you know, interacting, answering questions, talking to customers out front, and then a whole dedicated crew in the back to do listing.

And that's something we plan to make bigger next year because we'd love to offer it on even more cards.

But it just was a really cool process kinda taking a a little segment of what we do and building it out in this small footprint at the show, just be able to offer that.

But it was a lot of fun and definitely something we will be doing more and more of.

You you, made it a point to say, typically, kind of the range of cards that sell through DC Sports. I'm interested, especially in that box with all those bangers, the Messi, and the Burrow.

Maybe what what did you find out with with a package like that or an order like that? What the reason why they were interested in listing them same day?

I think we're used to, maybe on the higher end, sending those to an auction house, and it takes forever, but it just seems like that's the nature of, the way the hobby has operated.

What were maybe some of the reasons why you found a customer like that or other customers with bigger cards wanted to take advantage of the same day of it all?

Yeah. Like I said, I think for some people, it's just nice to be able to walk up in person and hand them over.

I think it's also if people had cards that they had had trouble moving leading up to the show, you know, a lot of people were kinda doing that and maybe they didn't wanna mail to us right then, so they know we're gonna be there.

It's easy to bring them by.

We also had a lot of people who were interested in, eBay was doing kind of a featured consigned at the national event on their site, and so as we were getting these same day cards in, we're feeding those item IDs over to eBay so those listings were featured in multiple places on the sites.

You kinda get some amplification of the listings, get more impressions, get more clicks, you know, all the things you want. So it's interesting because so many people, will say, I don't wanna sell during the national.

I don't wanna ship to consignment during the national. The hobby is just so big now. You know, if you go and look at how the things we listed that ended during the national and in the day or two after, we saw no dip.

We saw no massive increase. You know, other than an obvious premium on the national exclusive cards where we were listing them first, there just wasn't, you know, no wild swings we saw at all.

So, I think just all the more reason that exposure is what it's all about, and there's probably also a lot of people who were spending big money at the show.

It still blows my mind the amount of, capital you see people walking around that show floor with. And so, you know, some of these were just easy flips.

They they bought a collection and they had something they know you do great on, don't wanna handle the logistics of selling themselves, brought them over to us, we take care of it for them.

So, you know, just hit on a few different angles there.

Maybe as we kinda round the corner on this portion of the chat, did you have any moments where you saw something within your operation that was unexpected or moments of, like, oh, when we do this next year, we should think about x.

Were there any of those as, you work through kinda national intake? Yeah. We're definitely gonna go bigger.

Our goal is to get a bigger booth, and do a lot more same day listing of pretty much every value range. This year, we did $50 and up plus all the national exclusive cards. Would love to open that up to way more next year.

We got 500 cards Wednesday night at the show, and then we got 2,000 on Thursday for same day listing, and it just kept going throughout the show. So really just wanna lean into that. We saw some cards do really well.

We had a Caitlin Clark, from the Panini National packs, one of the gold vinyls to 10, just sold and got paid two nights ago for $1,700. I know the Caitlin Clark market is on fire, but this is not a rookie card anymore.

I know it's numbered to 10, but, like, that's a great sale. And so we just wanna, it works so well for our customers and so well for us that we just wanna do more of it.

So, our was keep going bigger. It's working. Alright. Let's get into some of the things that might have surprised you a little bit.

We all the national is full of surprises. We've got into this a little bit about some of the cards, but were were there any surprises in terms of profiles, types of cards, cards specifically that came to the DC sports booth?

Yeah. I I saw a lot more, you know, early two thousands, mid two thousands. I'm talking, you know, 2000 to 2010 and vintage cards than I expected.

Mhmm. I feel like on the show floor as a whole, most of the tables I walked by were busy with people buying and selling, not just, you know, window shopping and staring, and that's great to see for the hobby.

And we saw the same. You know, I think a lot of times that vintage stuff, you kinda feel like it's the dealers who've been setting up for all forty five years in the national just kinda rolling the same inventory out again.

But we saw a lot of that stuff changing hands. So that was that was a bit surprising. And, also, we didn't see quite as much of the, Panini and Topps redemption packs as we usually do.

I don't know if everybody was out just ripping them at trade nights and making deals, having other fun with them, but we saw a ton from LEAF, and we saw a ton of those mid to high end cards, but not quite as much as we have in years past of, like, the, you know, the Topps baseball and collegiate and those kind of packs coming over.

Yeah.

So I was listening to, Ryan Johnson's podcast yesterday, and he made reference that I don't remember if it was tops or panini or who it was, but I guess they were being mailed to individuals this year and they weren't being ripped at the show, which I don't know.

That kind of loses its luster a little bit. But might be a reason you didn't see as many as you had in years past. For sure. I I think that might have been the gold packs were getting mailed, and some of the silver packs were there.

Because I know we saw a handful of cards from the silver pack showing up. So, yeah, I, you know, I I did not go wait in that monstrous line myself, so I don't have any firsthand experience to share there.

But, I heard Ryan I think Ryan was talking with, with Pac Man about that. Yes. Yes. And, yeah, heard that and definitely interesting.

Again, I think at the national, you want it all here now right away, make it part of the experience, but I I can a little bit understand, but, you know, I think you have to do it at the show.

You you can't make people wait. What what did, what did people wanna talk, to you guys all about the most? Like, was there any topics, trends, things that you heard as people were coming up to to the space?

Yeah. So other than the obvious, like, hey, I've heard of you, but I've never sold with you before. So there's a lot of those questions on how do I get started?

How does consignment work? You know, not everybody's done it before. So there was a lot of that. The two biggest ones where we got a lot of eBay questions. Hey. I've got a Trae Young that won't get paid for.

How can I do that with you guys to get around the shipping problem? Or, hey. How do you guys deal with unpaid items? Or how does the, you know, eBay authenticity guarantee sales work with you guys, a lot of things like that.

We also got a lot of questions and feedback just on, like, our website and our customer experience, what people love, what they'd wanna see different.

It was encouraging because the what they wanna see different was validation of what we're working on. You know, we got some things about being more mobile friendly.

So, obviously, with the app we're building now, and we're six, eight weeks from launching that, so that's gonna be super exciting because I've got to address a lot of what some people said is, you know, functionally great, but not as easy to navigate as they want it to be on the website.

So, yeah, we got some very pointed feedback just about how our platform works and, you know, the the service is great, but how can we make it easier for people to access or easier to talk to us and things like that.

So, good to get that.

You know, I think a lot of people can be shy about feedback sometimes over a keyboard, But when they walk right up to you and you just kinda start a real casual conversation and show them that we're more than open to talk about it, we heard a lot.

So that was definitely very helpful. I I left the show feeling like the industry was maybe as strong as it's ever been.

Obviously, the market's performing very strong, and I think someone in your seat, looking at just, like, intake and what's coming in probably can measure what you're seeing on the outside with what's happening internally.

Like, how would you compare what DC Sports saw maybe in 2024 to what DC Sports saw in 2025 from a a national perspective?

Yeah. So, you know, I think what we saw was just more people. And, you know, some of that I know I used the word growth for us earlier.

Some of it is that. But, you know, it was less, hey. These are the dealers and the flippers and the repackers and all the people we know who buy on eBay from us and sell with us all year coming by to say hi and drop off in person.

And it was way more, hey. I just bought a box and I hit a, you know, I hit a numbered messy card I'm really excited about. I just wanna leave it with you guys. I haven't sold it to you before.

How does this work? Or, you know, kids walking around who are there with their parents at the national for the first time and wanna sell some of their cars because they're trying to build up to buy some big PC cards.

So just less of those, you know, kinda OG guys with us and a lot more new faces, a lot more new interactions, a lot more explaining who we are.

So it's super healthy for our business. I think it's super healthy for the hobby, as a whole, but we've had a lot more of that.

So very positive vibe and just showing the outreach of the hobby growing day by day was really seen in the way people, interacted with us at the booth.

When you have those types of conversations and you realize, like, there's maybe a learning curve because there's new people, they're at being at the show is great. They can sit there and talk with you, ask questions.

Did it did, like, that experience and the volume of those types of conversations influence you in a way of thinking about, like, how do we continue this drumbeat of education after the fact for these individuals who might see DC Sports on a podcast or someone else might or might see it online on Instagram?

Like, have you thought at all about, like, ways that you can continue to make sure that not, like and this kinda goes into the brand thing, but just like how, you know, people who come into your hemisphere are being educated about not only who you are as a business, but kind of the services that you provide?

Yeah. Yeah. So I think, you know, one thing we'd love to do next year we're already talking about is if we go bigger with the booth is get more technology there at the booth.

We had all our really sharpest people there to talk to people and help them face to face, but, you know, having kind of a few, like, just brand videos playing of here's how it works to consign with DC Sports, a sixty second video that walks you through it, having some, you know, public use like tablets and touch screens mounted on the side of our booth that go through our FAQ pages and give you a a screen to create an account with us and gonna have that welcome page pop up.

How we design the FAQs in our app in the future so it's less find information and more like AI driven, you know, bot interaction to try to find you the right answers.

So it's all a technology answer at this point. It's we've got the information. It's just how do you get that more accessible and more easily found by our customers. But, that's definitely a big part of what we're doing.

And then a lot of our interactions too as we keep growing are not just us as a business down to our customers, but we had a ton of business to business meetings with partners and vendors and things like that.

And so it's always great at these shows to see who's got something new. Who can you learn something from? What can we integrate into our business, our website, our app?

So, I've got a lot of homework to do, and I've got about a million follow-up emails and phone calls over the next few weeks, but, excited to see what comes of those because it always yields something interesting at the very least.

And I'm sure you're overwhelmed by all those conversations and digesting notes and the follow-up and all of that.

Like, when you are in those chats, I guess, ultimately, learning about new tech, learning about new people, new businesses.

Your your takeaways with that, like, what what are you trying to do as you have those conversations and see if those maybe conversations lead to partnerships?

Like, ultimately, what what is your goal in sitting there and taking those meetings and learning? Like, what are you trying to accomplish? Yeah. I mean, the honest answer is not fall behind.

I think too many people get very comfortable in a certain process or a certain skill set or a certain way of doing things. And if you become complacent, you lose your interest in those things.

I'm looking at anything somebody's showing off as new technology or a new solution, a new selling platform, a new way to buy, and even the worst sellers, all those things. And I'm looking at how would that overlap with our business now?

If it doesn't, how would it overlap with our business where I wanna be twelve months from now, five years from now? How will this affect the the broader hobby as a whole, and what does that mean for people who I mean, we sell on eBay.

Right? So we work with people who buy or sell cards. If you're in the hobby, you buy and you sell cards. That's kind of the definition of what being in the hobby is.

And so, for us, it's just being sure that nothing comes along that could be of value to us, our customers, or our employees in any way that if we could take advantage of it, it's not at the very least in my big notebook I keep of partnerships and possible things to revisit in the future because you just have to have all those irons in the fire to not fall behind in the hobby and every industry, honestly.

But, you know, cards and collectibles in particular move so fast these days that you just have to keep up, and those meetings are my way of keeping up.

I I this is, like, a a point that I wanna maybe, like, kinda go one level deeper, and I I find this super fascinating where when I was walking and I I am a fan of the way the corporate area was this year and how it just for me and just conversations and integrated, like, it it was a level up.

But it was very apparent to me through maybe a minute of conversations or just looking at certain booths, which companies were, like, were I've got Siri talking to me right now, which were stuck in kind of the status quo and those that were looking to innovate and and push forward.

I it's so challenging, especially when you're running a successful business that is growth oriented and you're doing well.

Like, how do you think about that where you're like, I don't wanna I don't wanna get us to fall into the status quo even though that we're doing well right now?

Like, how do you bring yourself out of the madness of the current operation to, like, look forward and kinda create this vision of where you wanna be for your business. Yeah.

I mean, the big thing for us is we've added so many people to our team who are so good at executing our day to day operations for listing cards, fulfilling eBay orders, all that that it's really I'm very fortunate that the luxury for me and a couple others here is we get to focus forward.

We get to get out a little bit of the head down work in front of us today and look at what is tomorrow, next month, next year look like.

And I think you see that. That's the reason we go to the corporate area. You know, the reason we don't set up in the dealer area is because we don't really want the tables in that whole environment, which don't get me wrong.

I love the buzz and the energy of the dealer area, but we want bigger footprint. We want room to grow into having more tables to talk to people. We wanna be able to have room to give away a bunch of t shirts like we did this year.

We want room to list at the show from that room like we did this year. And so, that's why we do that. And I think it's just it's just so important that we do it because otherwise, things will get stale eventually.

And, we have to find what are the cool things we can do next that are going to be fun, interesting, valuable for our customers. And, it's it's sometimes hard because to your point, you can get so busy in the here and now.

We're super proud of where we're at. We're listing, like, a quarter million auctions a month right now. That's a big step up from where we were last year. But the question isn't, like, this is exciting. How do we celebrate this?

The question is, this is great. How do we take the next step? And at some point, no matter how big you get, you need new technology, new innovation, new exciting ideas to take the next step. And so it's just keeping your eyes on that.

And you know, that's what we've been doing for years now and that's why we're doing a lot of the things we are. But, it's super fun to be there and like you said, see others who are doing the same thing.

You get ideas from those people. You see hear what people are asking for and that informs a lot of your decisions as far as business direction in the, you know, mid to long term.

I wanna hit maybe one more topic before we get into the kind of the hobby intel portion of our conversation.

We spent the weeks leading up to the national on the staging area talking about certain players trending, what people were holding, what people might be selling.

Based on, like, all the chats that we had when you were kinda standing there and you were having conversations with individual, did you what what sort of vibe did you get in terms of, like, the sell now versus hold decisions?

And then did you did you feel in a way that you're playing, like, a role of a consultant by sharing your advice or at all?

Like, maybe talk a little bit about that. Yeah. You have to do that some. And it's it's important to do that in person because sometimes we'll get a message online, and it's, should I sell this now?

Well, it's hard because for one, you don't wanna lead somebody astray or give them a bad answer, and it's sometimes not everything's a 100% predictable.

I think I saw way more sell now than I saw hold. I saw a lot of people with a really liquid cards just wanting the cash, and a lot of people asking, should I sell now?

Should I wait for the season? Should I do this? Should I do that? And I try to avoid giving very hard black and white answers because you don't want to be held to them and I don't want to be wrong.

My general advice to people was like are you gonna miss the card? Like does the card have sentimental value to you? Is it a part of your PC?

And why are you selling it? You know if you looked at a card you're trying to build up to and I told you you could take these five cards on the table you have in front of me and you could trade it for that card, would you do it?

Because if you tell me yes, it means there's something out there you're chasing that's worth more to you than the value of these cards that you're thinking about consigning, and that should kind of make your decision.

Not just consigning, selling. I'm out of habit I say consign, but you could be selling your own for anybody.

So it's all a game of priorities. Right? You know, do you want the cash in your pocket? What's your budget? Would you rather have some expendable income for breaks and PC pickups?

Or do you really value these cards and think this guy's gonna take off in the next year or two and you wanna hold? And you know, it's fun to talk through that with people because I had plenty of times.

It was a ten, twelve minute conversation about these 20 high end QB cards they had they didn't know what to do with, and it led to them not leaving a single card with us.

And that's fine, but I think they felt kind of informed by just talking to people who sell on eBay all day long about how we look at selling seasonality, values, timing, flipping, trading up, you know, getting cash out.

Like, there's all kinds of angles you can go there.

So, yeah, it's it's very it was very interesting to do, and we had a few, a few of those that were good conversations along with other memorable and interesting, customer interactions while we were there.

You mentioned the two thousands, like, cards that you were seeing. I wanna get into maybe with Hobby Intelligence a little some surprises.

Were were there any player sets parallels that you saw maybe throughout the show gaining, maybe unexpected momentum? So it's hard because when you take in as many cards as we did, to say one set or parallel gets kinda tricky.

I'll say one thing we saw a lot of was super low numbered or one zero one. So a couple super fractures, some black prisms, some printing plates, some gold vinyls, red refractors, things like that come in towards the end of the show.

And so what, you know, I can't prove this to you, but what my assumption is is what happened at the national was a lot of I've got a card that's so hard to comp.

It's so hard for me to know where to sell it. So I'm gonna walk the show floor. I'm gonna go to trade night.

What can I get in trade? What will somebody pay me for it? And then you've got a little more of a sample size for what you think the value is, and then they felt comfortable like, okay. I know what I'm gonna get.

I didn't make a deal this week. I'm ready to sell it. And those got dropped off over the weekend. So, we saw a lot of that near the end whereas, you know, early to mid show is just a lot of your super liquid cards.

You know, dealers who had clearly bought out collections or had inventory they just wanted to move on from that were in the 30 to $80 range and just tons and tons and tons of that stuff that, you know, is kind of that volume cash out that everybody has to do periodically to turn your inventory over.

Talk to us about maybe the Sunday close of the show. I was gone. Many, many people leave way before that.

You when we were talking, you were mentioning how that's, like, prime time for for you all. What was that experience like this year? Was it about the same as it has been in years past or or any different?

Yeah. So I actually have, just on that topic, I posted to our Instagram story Sunday morning because I walked into the center and there was, like, no line at Starbucks.

And And it's like okay. I see. This is how I know people have gone home already.

What Sunday turns into for us, and it was the same this year as every year, is you walk around, you see dealers who have already packed up and left, You see a third of the number of people on the show floor.

It's quieter in the corporate area and they go quiet, quiet, quiet. Oh my gosh. That guy just dropped off 35 boxes of cards. Then quiet, quiet, quiet, and then same thing.

A lot of those are just dealers we work with where it's what could I not move this week or, you know, maybe I bought a collection of a thousand cards and I wanna keep the top 5% to go back to my shop or go sell online.

And the other 95 just came to us. And so, it's kind of like a wait, wait, wait. Oh my gosh. Let's go. Let's go. Because we would have those moments. But it it was what it usually is. We got more early in the week than we usually do.

Wednesday and Thursday were way busier than they've ever been for us, But we probably took in 65% of our show haul as a whole, on, you know, the last two hours of Saturday and all of Sunday.

So, you know, directionally, it it definitely kept with past year's patterns. That's crazy. With the same day listing, did you did same day or did same day listings influence how customers thought about selling?

Like, were you seeing customers that wanted I or I guess, was it even possible based on the time frame where customers could, put their card same day listings, have those auction in and get paid out through the whole time of the show, or was that impossible based on just the time parameters?

Yeah. It it was kind of impossible. So we didn't end anything earlier than Sunday night, and that was just a few people who asked for three day auctions on higher end national exclusive, things like that.

It's tricky because we've got to get those cards back home to Richmond, Virginia to be able to feed them into our eBay fulfillment process.

As much as I'd love to run a twenty four hour auction Wednesday to Thursday night and guarantee you the first sale, I'm not willing to have the card end Thursday night and make the person who pays right away wait for us to ship it till Monday or Tuesday.

We're just that's not good for anybody. So, we had to be very conscious of that. So that that definitely fed into what we were doing. But, you know, I I don't think it affected a lot.

We had a few people who were interested in doing it because eBay was doing those high end breaks from the eBay live stage. And if you consign with one of the partner sellers with eBay, we had a QR code you could scan.

It would get you entry into maybe winning a spot in one of those breaks. So we had a lot of people who would kinda do it just to take part in the promotion. So that was kind of a cool other angle.

We did have one unfortunate, incident at the show. We also eBay kind of hid QR codes throughout the show floor. I don't know if you know about this. I know you work with eBay as well where, they called it the grail hunt.

And if you could find one of these very hidden they were not easy to find QR code and scan it, you would get to win one of these slabs they were giving away on eBay live stage.

You're giving away some nice high end slabs up there. There was a a mother and her son right by our booth who spotted the QR code, and we didn't even know where it was. We weren't told it was secret.

On, like, the bottom edge of a pillar next to us, like, behind an electrical box, and they're saying they're getting the phone out to get ready to scan it when a guy comes up and literally scans it between the woman's legs, like, to snipe the QR code, I felt so bad for them.

They they actually removed the QR code and went over to talk to the eBay people, so hopefully that whole situation worked itself out somehow. But, yeah, us talking about the eBay live breaks and that whole QR triggered that memory.

That was a, not so much interaction. We weren't really part of it, just a a witness, but, you know, there's there's all those little strange moments you see on the show floor too. Oh, man. That is something.

Did you have any celebrity encounters or interactions while you're at the National? So a few. I did. I was very fortunate. I'm a huge baseball fan. So before the break, I did on stage with eBay, which was me, Aaron, and Doc Gooden.

I was waiting in their backroom. The Antetokounmpo brothers had their event run a little long. So he's just back there with his phone out watching the Mets Giants game.

Second second time I've talked to Doc in my life, other one was also at a national two years ago. He also had a baseball game playing on his cell phone. He just starts up conversation about baseball.

So that was that was super cool. The only other one was, Frank the Tank of Barstool Sports was by the booth, passed by, and one of our team made a comment about being a Phillies fan to Frank, the diehard Mets fan.

And what ensued was a highly animated, overly energetic, monologue of just stats and takes and everything on baseball that was, was quite a sight to behold. So, yeah, it it was definitely an interesting show.

You see a lot of people just, you know, walk in the halls and and things like that. I saw some pictures from the I think it was the Panini party of people standing next to Taco Fall, and they looked like they were about two feet tall.

So, yeah, lot lots of fun encounters, lots of fun interactions, but but great show for sure. I I had a a run-in with Doc Gooden too, during trade night.

And the funniest thing about Doc Gooden was he was on stage doing trivia for, like, free packs, and the the demo in front of him, you know, is skewed, quite younger where the I'm like, do these kids even know who this guy is?

But it was hilarious. He was, like, asking trivia questions where he it just, like, propped him up, and he was, like, the answer for all of them.

And I I just thought that was, hilarious. But, yeah, I was also backstage and had a run-in with big Papa Pump, Scott Steiner. As a wrestling fan, I was just like, this is unbelievable.

But it's like those moments at the national that you literally can only get at the national, and it in a way, it makes it super special. Absolutely. Yeah. No. It's super cool. And and it's nice just that there's that vibe everywhere.

And there's and there's so many different ways. Like, sometimes I feel like you even see the influencers and content creators in the space get stopped for like photos and handshakes more often than the athletes.

It's it's it's so interesting the angle that the whole space has gone where everything is so digital and so content first and social driven that those people mean so much to so many of the people walking around.

We had a a father and a son who was probably seven or eight years old, stopped by our booth at one point, go, I know you do the podcast with the Sports Cars Nonsense guys.

He's trying to meet him, but we can't find him. And so I I called Mike on the phone. I said, I've got a young fan who's trying to track you guys down and can't find you. Where are you? Fanned out the booth number he was at.

They went over there. They managed to find him. So it's just it's cool how much those interactions mean especially to the younger part of the crowd, and it's not just about the celebrity sightings when we talk about athletes.

You know? And so, yeah. It's really cool to see that stuff happen. I I had I won't mention any names, but I had a conversation with somebody who is very visible and people recognize before the national.

And my question was, how do you even do work at the national when everyone is going to stop you and recognize you.

And they made mention, you know, they feel very fortunate that that that happens. But, yeah, I mean, it's almost like you need like, you see at Fanatics Fest, you see, like, Logan Paul with all the security details.

Like, maybe in a couple years, these individuals are gonna have to get people to make sure they could actually get to from point a to point b.

It's why. That that would be doing the Ken Golden, which is having, you know, four or five massive bodyguards following you around. I I'm not sure why it's necessary, but I know it happens.

Oh, I love it. Alright. As we're rounding the corner on this chat, are you seeing anything? I know it's you've only been back in the saddle for about seventy two hours, but just what are you seeing in post, show auction results?

Are you anything specifically? Have you been able to pay attention to it? Like, how are cards performing?

Yeah. I don't know that I'm back in the saddle. I might still be a couple paces behind the horse at this point, but, I'm I'm doing my best. It's you know, it really has I think the hobby is just so big now.

Like, auctions just kept rolling. In in past years, you know, we had a smaller team, and the national really took away from that, obviously, to man the booth and all that.

This year, we just kept rolling. We had, you know, almost 60,000 auctions in last week during the show, the week of the show.

We listed from the show, so nothing changed. We've seen prices holding really steady. We got an abundance of mail, the week of the show and so far this week.

And so, it, you know, it just if anything, I feel like it's just it doesn't detract from the health of cards transacting on the market. Like, maybe we've seen it in the past, which is super good. That that's exciting for us.

That's great for everybody. But, you know, we're also maybe it's just early because because I know we've talked about this before, but from a seasonality perspective, it's, you know, we're seeing a lot of football.

Like, the percentage of football within sports cards is climbing day by day right now.

So if there's any one thing, it's less price related and just more sport mix, is we're still seeing a ton of non sports, TCG, Marvel, Star Wars, Disney, and we're seeing a ton of football roll in.

So those are probably the two we're indexing heavier on in the last seven to ten days, than we have other things.

But what we really interesting for me to see I'm curious. We've got all the same day listing stuff just kinda now wrapping up.

So kinda do a look back and see when we talk again in two weeks, you know, look at how did those very first sales of those national cards do versus the things that sold ten and fourteen days later?

And did that have effect the effect that we are really chasing for people in doing that?

As we kinda close this out, is there one specific learning or lesson that you brought back to with the office and shared with your team and you're thinking about, as we kind of round out the back half of the year? Yeah.

I we kinda already touched on it, but just having more that can be done right there in person that's kinda self serve for customers, both from a we wanna put content forward about what us and what we do and what kind of things do we sell.

We wanna lean in even more to highlighting our partnerships with companies like eBay and Haystack and the technology companies we work with, and just having, like, the ability of people to check their accounts right there.

I know the Wi Fi, I will say, infinitely better this year. 100%. Wi Fi and air conditioning, they promised us improvements on both, and they nailed it.

I I was cautiously optimistic, but both were great. But just giving people screens to check their accounts on, you listed something with us last night, you'll come see how it's doing, come look, all that kind of stuff.

So for us next year, a lot more technology and a lot more of an interactive footprint, while still trying to do all the same day listing and answer the customer questions and interact with people we were able to do this year.

So, again, just growth, growth, growth. Don't stop and find new things to make it fun to come see us, not just drop your cards and run away.

So, that's really what we're gonna target next year, but the good news is we have a little time to decompress, settle back into normal life, and then start planning something that's still eleven and a half months away.

This was a fun conversation. Glad to hear it from your perspective, Tory. If you have any cards laying around that you don't know what to do with post national, my good friends at DC Sports, might be able to help you out.

Tory, this was fun. Another staging area in the can. Until next time. Absolutely. Thanks.